Rifle Grenade Soldier Carries Two Rifles

[Holman]

This is something I've noticed since the earliest days of CMBN: a soldier with a rifle grenade is actually shown carrying two rifles, one normal model and one with the rifle grenade mounted on the barrel. I know I've seen this many times in U.S. units. I can't recall whether I've seen it with other armies.

I assume this is an artifact of the game engine not being able to add and remove a rifle grenade to the gun on the fly; it shows him with two weapon models because he's actually switching between two weapons (just as a bazooka soldier carries a rifle and a bazooka, and hoists each appropriately).

Still, it always looks a little funny. "Damn! I need my other Garand!"

[YankeeDog]

I suspect you're right that this is actually a game limitation and not an intentional thing, but oddly enough this may actually be accurate at least some of the time for U.S. Army formations.

The rifle grenade attachment for the Garand blocked the gas return port, disabling the semi-auto action and turning the Garand into a semi-auto rifle with a rather poorly designed bolt lever. You also had to load the rifle with blanks to fire a rifle grenade. As a result, apparently some grenadiers carried two weapons if they could get their hands on a spare, so that they could leave the rifle grenade adapter on one, but still have a semi-auto weapon available. Not sure if the secondary weapon would usually be a Garand, though -- a carbine or even M3 SMG would seem a more logical choice.

Especially late war, I've also read that some rifle platoons consolidated their rifle grenades into an ad hoc "Grenadier Team", comprised of the best grenadier in the platoon plus an assistant to carry all the rifle grenades, rather than distributing the rifle grenades evenly amongst the squads.

Be interesting to see if we ever get this organization in CM. It would present certain advantages in terms of controlling where and when the rifle grenades are used. I assume the "Grenadier Team" was integrated within one of the squads and would be detached on an as-needed basis, rather like Bazooka teams are now.

[c3k]

Does that happen with fresh troops, or after casualties? (They'll sometimes grab the other rifle if they give buddy aid.)

[akd]

Yeah, the grenade launcher is considered a squad weapon, so a regular rifleman will pick it up during buddy aid even though he already has a rifle.

[womble]

...Grenadier Team...

Ooo. That would be so cool. It could be a platoon option like number of zooks is now...

[Holman]

Does that happen with fresh troops, or after casualties? (They'll sometimes grab the other rifle if they give buddy aid.)

A fresh rifle squad shows one soldier with two rifles, one of them mounting a grenade.

I haven't checked to see whether the second rifle disappears when he's out of rifle grenades.

[Battlefront.com]

I'll look into it, but besides the Buddy Aid situation it shouldn't be happening. And frankly, even Buddy Aid shouldn't produce that result as in real life the soldier would not likely lug two Garands around.

Steve

[akd]

A fresh rifle squad shows one soldier with two rifles, one of them mounting a grenade.

Could you clarify where you are seeing this: save game, new scenario, or in the editor?

I'm pretty sure I've never seen them showing up in the editor with two rifles, so I wonder if it is an issue related to save games or to scenarios with old TO&E baked in?

[Holman]

Could you clarify where you are seeing this: save game, new scenario, or in the editor?

I'm pretty sure I've never seen them showing up in the editor with two rifles, so I wonder if it is an issue related to save games or to scenarios with old TO&E baked in?

Ah, interesting. It seems to have been fixed since the beginning! If I go into the editor now and choose an American infantry battalion, the RG men have only one weapon.

However, just now I played a turn of the Devil's Descent campaign (made back in the early days of CMBN), and Airborne RG soldiers there definitely show two rifles from the beginning of the game. I know the engineers in Courage & Fortitude (and perhaps other squads) also had this problem. I suppose it must be left over from earlier scenarios.

It's not a big deal, but it's great to see they've fixed it. That's quality.

[Battlefront.com]

Always happy to know something isn't broken However, this sort of problem should be automatically fixed even for stuff made during the old days of CMBN. That's because only the "shells" of Squads and Teams are saved into files, while their contents are loaded dynamically based on what the current TO&E is. This means I can fix the 2nd guy in Team 1234 without any backwards compatibility issues. What I can't do is change Team 1234 to be Team 5678 for older stuff. Once the Team/Squad ID is saved into a scenario file that's that.

Having said that, save games, including Campaigns that are already underway, have everything locked in. This probably explains why you saw it in your Devil's Descent campaign, but don't see it with new stuff. I have no idea when I fixed that problem. Could have been a long time ago or recently. I don't keep track of that sort of thing, I just fix 'em as I find 'em.

Steve

[slysniper]

DURING one of the updates I had a campaign where the Brits had every man carrying a Bren. Needless to say the Germans lost that battle, but after that, once I went to the next mission , everything worked fine and I never had any more problems. (I was glad, really did not want to start over and play the campaign again.

Just some funny bugs that happen with the updates.